{"id":199839,"date":"2025-10-09T09:56:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/199839\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T09:56:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:56:12","slug":"nba-makes-comeback-in-chinese-mainland-staging-two-games-in-macao-sar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/199839\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA makes comeback in Chinese mainland, staging two games in Macao SAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this file photo dated July 8, 2024, people walk past an NBA fan store with the NBA logo in New York. (PHOTO \/ AFP)<\/p>\n

MACAO – The National Basketball Association (NBA) returned to the Chinese mainland on Thursday, staging two games in the Macao Special Administrative Region and announcing a multiyear partnership with mainland technology giant Alibaba.<\/p>\n

The NBA is due to play two pre-season games in the special administrative region on Friday and Sunday, part of a five-year contract with Las Vegas Sands’ Macao unit Sands China.<\/p>\n

The Macao games aim to bolster the NBA’s profile in the mainland, where around 300 million people play basketball.<\/p>\n

“The China fans, I feel like are some of our biggest supporters,” Brooklyn Nets player Michael Porter Jr told a media conference at the Venetian.<\/p>\n

“There’s so many fans out here. So I think coming out here and being able to play in front of them is definitely a blessing for us and for them.”<\/p>\n

ALSO READ: NBA returns to China with Macao playing host to preseason games<\/a><\/p>\n

NBA experience<\/p>\n

The NBA games are being held at Sands Venetian property along with a five-day free-to-enter music, fashion and technology exhibition showcasing the NBA brand. Shaquille O’Neal is among NBA celebrities attending the event, the league said.<\/p>\n

The Brooklyn Nets, owned by Alibaba chairman Joseph Tsai, will play the Phoenix Suns at sold-out games in the arena.<\/p>\n

Sands owner, the US billionaire Adelson family, also own the Texas-based NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks.<\/p>\n

The casino operator announced its collaboration with the NBA in December 2024 and said it wanted to bring elite basketball directly to mainland fans.<\/p>\n

The announcement by Alibaba Group said it would provide artificial intelligence and cloud computing services with the NBA and enhance fan experiences on the NBA app in the mainland.<\/p>\n

Alibaba Cloud will be the official cloud computing and AI partner of NBA China, it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this file photo dated July 8, 2024, people walk past an NBA fan store with the NBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[30190,49,48,97491,2698,459,82],"class_list":["post-199839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-alibaba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-macao","tag-national-basketball-association","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}